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whiskyinmind
whiskyinmind
10 March 2005 @ 09:25 pm
Charmed vs Buffy  
So I'm slightly inebriated right now, but I'm watching Charmed.

Not that the two have a connection because I actually have Charmed in my 'series link' thing on auto-view so I'd be watching it anyway.

The good news is that I'm obviously better now because I'm drinking beer again, the slightly odd news is that I'm still watching Charmed.

Anyway. Charisma Carpenter is damn funny in this show. Anyway, the point I was going to make, which I'll probabably look at again in the morning and wonder what the hell was going through my head, was that in spite of my viewing Charmed as being incredibly light-weight and superficial, it's nailed the 'shades of grey' dynamic that BtVS lost somewhere along the line. The 'Big Bad' this season? The avatars. Which Leo is one of. I really hope they don't make these guys obviously 'evil' in the killing/raping/mutilation way - because the creeping insinuation of bad-ness is much more appealing here. The whole 'there is no line between good and evil' thing really appeals to me.

Hell, my LJ name comes from my fascination with Mara Jade, my second favourite character on Buffy/Angel is Faith. Both of them are ambiguous as to which side they're on. I adore the whole Good Girl/Bad Girl dynamic going on with them.

Charmed just saw that same dynamic both with Paige and with CC's character (whose name I didn't catch - I'll have to watch the repeat at the weekend).

I know this might sound sound strange given that I'm a die-hard Xander fan. Xander on BtVS was often seen as the one who saw things in black and white. Good and Evil. I think that's a dis-service to his character to say that's all he was (after all if it was would the long-term Xanya relationship have happened?) A lot of fans of the show write Xander off as being a bigot because of that black&white view he seemed to have. I have issues with that, which I will bring up later, but it's kind of indicative of the later years of the show.

There may seem to be a move towards the shades of grey thing with Spike and his ambiguous soul but overall there was still very much a view of Ultimate Good (Buffy) versus Ultimate Evil (The First).

Charmed seems to be going down the grey route, and hey although I've never been a fashion victim, maybe grey really is the new buzz colour....
 
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[identity profile] rileysaplank.livejournal.com on March 10th, 2005 01:29 pm (UTC)
So what you're trying to say is that grey is the new black?

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[identity profile] neonchameleon.livejournal.com on March 10th, 2005 01:47 pm (UTC)
Um.

Remember the Charmed Ones attitude to Cole?

As for the good guys being the enemies, do the names Angelus, The Initiative and Dark Willow mean nothing anymore? Also, the Watcher's Council (which Giles is one of) and the Knights of Byzantium. From the other side, see: Spike (who, unlike Cole is able eventually to be good), Faith, Wesley and others for examples of redemption- which is the shade of grey Charmed has always appeared to me to lack.
[identity profile] whiskyinmind.livejournal.com on March 10th, 2005 04:04 pm (UTC)
The point I was trying to make (which I obviously failed to do) was that Buffy as a show in the end tended towards the redemptionist policy that the bad can become ultimately good by their deeds. While that is no bad thing, it makes for (in my view) ultimately dull television. It's far more interesting to me for television, films, writing, fic and the like, to skirt the very limit of what is good and what is bad.

Taking Buffy herself as an example, she's good. Right? Yet she has killed or caused the deaths of countless humans on the show. Angelus. He's bad, right? Yet he's not only fogiven but is called upon for help in season four of AtS.

When BtVS was at it's best it skirted on that edge - the never quite lnowing whether the good guys were really good and whether the bad guys were really bad. Charmed on the other hand has always been stark contrasts until this season. Even the Cole story line which showed him trying for redemption yet ultimately needing to be 'vanquished' because he was evil. Irredeemable.

This season, with Leo's skirt with darkness, and apparently Paige's flirtation with ambiguity, is incredibly appealing to me because it blurs that line.

The idea of ultimate good and ultimate bad just seems false to me, and that's something that early seasons of Buffy seemed to recognise - you had Angelus, you had the Initiative. You had the whole ambiguity. And then later seasons forgot that and went with the 'good guys will out' attitude. Charmed started off with that standpoint and is now moving towards the moral ambiguity factor that makes it far more interesting. To me at least. :)
[identity profile] skipp-of-ark.livejournal.com on March 10th, 2005 07:42 pm (UTC)
Well, may I ask -- does *everybody* need to be redeemed? I'm not talking about good guys'n'gals gone bad, I'm talking about villains either getting the chance to redeem themselves or being disposed of almost the instant the writers lost interest in them, be it killed off or just never showing up again. Some of us actually *like* our villains to be, while interesting and complex, ultimately just plain bad folks who don't give a dman about redemption, who ultimately get their righteous comeuppance, be it a much deserved knee in the crotch or a straight-up, one-way ticket to the Hot Place Down Under With Pitchforks. Even Andrew, the most absolutely annoying and utterly lacking in anything resembling a redeeming quality, played by the most talent-free actor ME ever hired, gets redeemed. (okay, he *might* process useless oxygen into valuable carbon dioxide for plants, but there's approximately five billion other people doing that, so he's just redundant.)

The fatal flaw of the last two seasons of BtVS are that, ultimately, their biggest story is the set-up and execution of How to Redeem Spike, Guest-Starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I would have been much, much happier if the story of Spike and his Soul had been how he was still an utter bastard who needed to have a stake shoved up his arse and into his heart. (The therapist says I have bitterness issues.) Other people may feel differently, of course.